Welcome to Monday, November 24, 2025, and the beginning of Thanksgiving Week. Many people will be taking off the whole week (I ain’t going nowhere), and the airports will be jammed. It’s also National Sardines Day, a day I can’t abide because I hate nearly all fish. Here’s a photo of a plate of the malodorous fish (and olives) taken at a friend’s birthday celebration at a Boston tapas restaurant in 2014. I eschewed the dish. (I think these are sardines, but they could well be the equally repugnant anchovy. I don’t know from fish, though I do love tuna fish sandwiches, most sushi, and lox on a bagel with a schmear.)
It’s also National Illustration Day, National Carménère Day (a red wine), and D. B. Cooper Day (it was on this day in 1971 in that a guy using that name parachuted out of a commercial plane over Washington state with $200,000 in random money. He—or his body—was never found; I think he probably died. Some of the ransom money was later found in the forest).
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 24 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*After insulting Zelensky and demanding that Ukraine accept his 28-point peace plan (which seems to have been drafted by Russia) for ending the war with Russia, Trump is backing off a bit.
First, from the Guardian:
President Trump said Saturday he could be open to changes in the administration’s 28-point plan for ending the war in Ukraine after Kyiv, European governments and even some Republican lawmakers denounced it as far too heavily weighted in Moscow’s favor.
“No, not my final,” Trump said at the White House after he was asked if the terms were nonnegotiable. “We’d like to get to peace. It should’ve happened a long time ago.” He didn’t specify what changes were possible in the plan.
And from the WSJ (link above):
President Trump said Saturday he could be open to changes in the administration’s 28-point plan for ending the war in Ukraine after Kyiv, European governments and even some Republican lawmakers denounced it as far too heavily weighted in Moscow’s favor.
“No, not my final,” Trump said at the White House after he was asked if the terms were nonnegotiable. “We’d like to get to peace. It should’ve happened a long time ago.” He didn’t specify what changes were possible in the plan.
But administration officials were increasingly on the defensive over Russia’s role in shaping the proposal.
The administration has zigzagged repeatedly on aiding Ukraine or pressuring it to reach a deal with Moscow. Trump has previously mused about sending cruise missiles to Kyiv and predicted it might regain all the territory Russian forces occupy. But Trump’s ultimatum to Ukraine signals a sharp turn by the administration to try to force through a deal on a short timeline.
Trump has given Ukraine a Thursday deadline to respond to the proposal, which would require that Kyiv cede territory to Russia, block its ambitions to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and cap the size of its military amid other major economic and political concessions to Moscow.
Ukraine would receive funds for reconstruction and assurances from the U.S. that it would discuss with allies providing military assistance and other steps if Russia broke the agreement and attacked again. Those commitments would fall short of a European-led “reassurance force” stationed within the country to deter further Russian attacks.
Disclosure of the administration blueprint, drafted in secret by Ukraine envoy Steve Witkoff in consultation with Kremlin confidant Kirill Dmitriev, has roiled the trans-Atlantic relationship and sparked a flurry of diplomatic efforts to reshape it.
“If you ask me personally, I would rewrite everything,” said Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur, calling the plan “100 to zero” in Russia’s favor.
Some top Republicans condemned the proposal as appeasement to Russian President Vladimir Putin that, if realized, could lead to the collapse of Ukraine.
Yes, I know about Realpolitik, and we can’t devote all of our energy to giving money and weapons to Zelensky. But still, do we have to promote a peace agreement that might not only have been drafted by Russia, but also gives the farm away to Russia. It seems wrong to me that an autocratic state can invade a Democratic one in Europe, and we can’t do much except hel the autocrats slice of big bits of the invaded Democracy. Here’s the latest statement from our “President”:
*ICE is now acting totally unethically and probably illegally; this is documented in a NYT piece called “‘The system is meant to break you’: what ICE is dong to people here legally.” (Article archived here.)
Over the past several months, alongside a team from Opinion Video, I’ve spoken to a half-dozen people and their families who have been taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention. Each was re-entering, or was already in the country legally. No one was smuggled across the border.
None of the people we spoke to had a recent criminal record. (Three had minor nonviolent brushes with the law, all in the distant past; one received a pardon.) All were treated like suspected violent criminals, forced into tiny cells, dressed in prison uniforms, manacled for transfer. Those we spoke to were held for anywhere from 10 days to over 70 days. The experience shattered their equilibrium.
Immigration and Border Patrol officers have long held extremely broad discretionary powers to welcome or reject noncitizens arriving in the United States. And this is far from the first wave of xenophobia to hit America. But something different is happening now in the breadth and ferocity of efforts to change the makeup of this country.
. . .The videos circulating on social media are brutal and terrifying — the often violent arrests, people pulled screaming from their cars, out of day care centers, away from their children and their spouses. What should give Americans equal pause is the inhumanity happening beyond the cameras, away from the view of judges and lawyers and the media. Due process is not a constitutional right afforded only to citizens; legal restrictions on unlawful detention apply to all people on U.S. soil.
The stories we were told call into question both the constitutionality and the morality of how the Trump administration is directing immigration policy. That immorality, once unleashed, may ultimately be aimed at others in this country, regardless of immigration status. If a woman returning from vacation with her young children can be suddenly removed from her family and her life, how can we believe that any of us will remain safe?
There was a disquieting sameness to the horror that was described to us. Those we interviewed despaired at how the detention centers were kept purposefully, horrendously cold, forcing some of them to huddle up against strangers. They spoke of lights left on 24 hours a day and of interstate transfers that came without notice. They described food that was inadequately distributed and made them unwell. Of being forced to urinate and defecate in front of fellow detainees and guards. Of being humiliated and mocked by officers. All referred to a destabilizing lack of information, the dreadful understanding that they could be held for weeks or months without anyone informing them why they were being held at all.
We heard how they begged for recourse — asked to speak with the outside world, for bond hearings, to protest their detention. They referenced, with anxiety and sorrow, others they encountered, some presumably still languishing in those cells, without counsel or relief.
Now the details of every story could not be verified in extenso, but there’s enough for the NYT, and for me, to know that ICE is going wild, detaining people who are here legally without a proper hearing and not really concentrating on the criminals who were supposed to be deported first. Every single person detained should be able to see an immigration judge within one day, and if there papers are in order and there’s no criminality in their background, they should be released. I don’t think this is what voters envisioned when they pulled the lever for Trump. Yes, nobody should be allowed in without a credible threat of being endangered in their home countries, but those let in should be followed up scrupulously. There’s simply too much jingoism involved in the whole system: the view that we shouldn’t let anybody in. On the other hand, it seems to me that many Democrats want open borders. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that that would be a disaster.
*WaPo columnist Meghan McArdle points out the elephant in the room, which people are beginning to smell: “The signs of educational decline are now impossible to ignore.” I’ve mentioned several times here the distressing data from UC San Diego showing that incoming students often can’t even do basic algebra–or addition. McArdle mentions that, too, but sees it as a harbinger of a huge upcoming problem. She’s right.
The results of this thinking can be seen in a recent report from the University of California at San Diego, which like the rest of the UC system stopped accepting standardized test scores in 2020. In 2024 the school had to redesign its remedial math program to create a class that focused entirely on remediating elementary school and middle school math. In 2025, more than 8 percent of entering students needed that class.
These are college students who chose to enroll in a major with a math requirement yet struggle to round numbers to the nearest hundred, add or divide fractions, or work with negative numbers.
Most astonishingly, in 2024, the majority of kids who needed a refresher on the most basic skills had taken at least one higher-level high school math course, such as calculus or statistics, and had an average grade point average in their math classes of 3.65. More than one-quarterof them had straight A’s in a subject they demonstrably didn’t understand. And this problem is not limited to UC San Diego or California. I’ve heard professors at many institutions, including Harvard, express concerns about the number of unprepared students they were seeing after admissions offices stopped demanding test scores.
And back to her big conclusions:
But solving problems is hard, and in politics, it often involves taking on well-organized constituencies that will wave away the smoke and insist that everything is just fine. So institutions often choose to disregard the underlying issues and simply whack the alarm with a hammer until it stops beeping.
There has been a lot of that going on recently, most notably in education. Instead of rectifying disparities in preparation and achievement, people decided it would be simpler to adjust the measurements. Parents opposed standardized testing, got their kids disability diagnoses that allowed them extra time on tests and lobbied teachers to change bad grades. Exhausted teachers responded with grade inflation, which also helped conceal that low-income and minority kids weren’t doing as well as their richer and White peers. Progressive educators watered down curriculums, gutted gifted and talented programs, and weakened admissions standards for honors classes and magnet schools. Colleges dropped standardized testing requirements, in part because that made it easier to diversify their student body. None of these things happened everywhere, but they happened in many places, and all of them made it harder to see — or rectify — pandemic-era learning loss.
t should be a warning to the growing number of politicians who think they can fix other problems — like soaring rents or rising electricity costs — by simply freezing prices. The prices are telling us that there’s too little supply to meet demand, or that something (such as renewables mandates or too few natural gas pipelines) is driving up supply costs. Freezing prices doesn’t fix that any more than a courtesy A gives students what they actually need to succeed in college.
It does the opposite, because it makes it less profitable to build housing units, transmission lines or generating capacity. You can claim you’re going to pair supply-side reforms with price controls (claims we’ve heard from Zohran Mamdani, New York’s mayor-elect, and Mikie Sherrill, New Jersey’s next governor). But the reason those reforms haven’t happened is that they require politicians to take on powerful groups such as homeowners or environmental activists opposed to new natural gas pipelines.
A price freeze doesn’t make those fights any easier to win. It temporarily relieves the political pressure to actually do something about rising prices, while creating problems down the road. Addressing educational disparities through grade inflation, or managing a supply shortage by freezing prices, is like trying to cure your lung cancer by smoking more. It undoubtedly feels better in the moment than the drastic therapy that’s actually needed. But in the long run, it can only make things worse.
Those conclusions are rather lame for McArdle: they’re basically to DO SOMETHING, and her remedies are nothing new: curb grade inflations restore stndardardized testing requirements, and restore classes for gifted and talented students. I’ve even written about that here. On the other hand, maybe sounding the alarm and these remedies over and over again is okay, because if the education system goes down the drain, so does America. We’ll be a country full of dumb-asses.
*As Hezbollah refuses to disarm, much less disband, Israel has begun airstrikes on the terrorist group in Lebanon.
Israel on Sunday struck Lebanon’s capital for the first time since June, saying it killed Hezbollah’s chief of staff Haytham Tabtabai and warning the Iran-backed militant group not to rearm and rebuild a year after their latest war.
The strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs killed five people and wounded 25 others, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said.
Hezbollah did not immediately comment. Earlier, it said the strike, launched almost exactly a year after a ceasefire ended that Israel-Hezbollah war, threatened an escalation of attacks – just days before Pope Leo XIV is scheduled to visit Lebanon on his first foreign trip.
“We will continue to act forcefully to prevent any threat to the residents of the north and the state of Israel,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement. Government spokesperson Shosh Bedrosian did not say whether Israel informed the U.S. before the strike, saying only that “Israel makes decisions independently.” Israel did not issue an evacuation warning.
Although Hezbollah didn’t comment, Reuters says that the strike did kill Tabtabai. Was it worth striking him? Back to the article:
Tabtabai had led Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Unit. Israel’s military said he “commanded most of Hezbollah’s units and worked hard to restore them to readiness for war with Israel.”
In 2016, the United States designated Tabtabai as a terrorist, calling him a military leader who led Hezbollah’s special forces in Syria and Yemen, and it offered up to $5 million for information about him.
Tabtabai had been the apparent successor of Ibrahim Aqil, who was killed in September 2024 in Israeli attacks that wiped out much of Hezbollah’s senior leadership, including longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah.
. . . Israeli air strikes over southern Lebanon have intensified in recent weeks while Israel and the United States have pressured Lebanon to disarm the powerful militant group. Israel asserts that Hezbollah is trying to rebuild its military capabilities in southern Lebanon. The Lebanese government, which has approved its military’s plan that would disarm Hezbollah, has denied those claims.
. . .“They want to take our weapons. But our weapons will not be taken,” said Maryam Assaf, who lives nearby and heard the strike. She said it “only gives us more determination, strength, and dignity.”
Lebanon and United Nations peacekeepers have been critical of ongoing Israel attacks in the country and accuse Israel of violating the ceasefire agreement.
Aoun last week said the country is ready to enter negotiations with Israel to stop its air strikes and to withdraw from five hilltop points it occupies on Lebanese territory. It was unclear if Israel would agree.
Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam say they are committed to disarming all non-state actors in the country, including Hezbollah.
It’s should be easy to disarm Hezbollah, one would think. The agreement says they should disarm, Hezbollah is nominally under the control of the Lebanese government, and, most of all, the UN forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is supposed to do the disarming and keep Hezbollah in check. Needless to say, UNIFIL has not done its job. If it had, Israel wouldn’t be attacking. One thing does bother me about the latest strike: the failure of Israel to give any “knock on the door” warning. On the other hand, it had to calculate the toll of dead without warning versus the possible escape of Tabtabai if people had been warned. I can’t make that kind of calculation.
*Finally, American strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific have now killed over eighty people, with boats being incinerated without warning. So far I have seen no evidence that the boats were carrying drugs, and, even if they were, they should have first given the boats the chance to surrender. Further, I have never accepted Trump’s claims that each boat sunk saved 25,000 or 50,000 American lives. Now the AP shows that the last claim is bogus.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that military strikes on suspected drug boats his administration has been carrying out for more than two months in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean are saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S.
He most recently cited these numbers on Monday while answering questions from reporters after announcing a new initiative that will allow foreigners traveling to the U.S. for the World Cup next year to get interviews for visas more quickly.
But experts say that this is a grossly simplistic interpretation of the situation.
TRUMP: “Every boat we knock out, we save 25,000 American lives.”
THE FACTS: The numbers to support Trump’s claim don’t add up, and sometimes don’t exist. For example, people in the U.S. who die from drug overdoses each year are far fewer than the amount Trump suggests have been saved by the boat strikes his administration has carried out since September.
“The statement that each of the administration’s strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats saves 25,000 lives is absurd,” said Carl Latkin, a professor of public health at Johns Hopkins University who studies substance use. “The evidence is similar to that of the moon being made of blue cheese. If you look carefully, you will see a resemblance. However, a close analysis of this claim suggests that it lacks all credibility.”
According to the latest preliminary data from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, there were about 97,000 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. during the 12-month period that ended June 30. That’s down 14% from the estimated 113,000 for the previous 12-month period.
. . . . The U.S. military has attacked 21 boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean since strikes began on Sept. 2, most recently on Nov. 15. Using Trump’s numbers, that would mean the strikes have prevented 525,000 fatal drug overdoses in the U.S — far more than the number of overdose deaths that have occurred in recent two-month periods. This essentially implies that the administration is saving more lives than would have ever been lost.
Lori Ann Post, the director of the Institute for Public Health and Medicine at Northwestern University, explained that “there’s no empirically sound way to say a single strike ‘saves 25,000 lives,’” even if the statement is interpreted more broadly to mean preventing substance use disorders and resulting ripple effects. Among the issues she pointed to are a lack of verifiable cargo data or published models linking such boat strikes to changes in drug use, as well as markets that will adapt to isolated supply losses.
“The math and the data are not there,” said Post, who studies drug overdose deaths and economic drivers of the opioid crisis.
Latkin added that claiming one lethal dose of a drug automatically translates to one death is a “very simple way of looking at it,” as different people have different tolerances.
Well, we’re used to Trump lying, and I’ve seen Presidential lies since Nixon proclaimed that “I am not a crook.” But Trump’s lies are qualitatively different: bigger whoppers and more frequent. At least we have this claim cleared up, except I’ve still seen no evidence that these boats were carrying drugs.
*One last word, or rather lack thereof. We know nothing about Ghost, the Giant Pacific Octopus who was senescing while brooding infertile eggs in a California Aquarium. They took the cephalopod off public view, and she should be dead by now, but they are keeping it completely quiet. That’s not right given how many people sent cards and love to the octopus. ‘Fess up, Aquarium of the Pacific!
Ghost in earlier days:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the editor of Listy ssurprisingly hows some sympathy for Andrzej, who is carrying the whole website himself:
Hili: I know you have to concentrate, that’s why I’m trying not to disturb you.
Andrzej: Thank you, sweetheart.
In Polish:
Hili: Ja wiem, że musisz się skupić, dlatego próbuję ci nie przeszkadzać.
Ja: Dziękuję, kochanie.
*******************
*From Jesus of the Day; this is basically true unless the mutant is in an asexual or pathenogenetic species:
From Cat Memes:
From Give Me a Sign:
From Emma, and yes, it’s insane, but the ideologues aren’t rational:
It is insane that anyone thinks a 10-year-old can consent to loss of fertility.
It is insane that anyone thinks”fertility preservation options” can be meaningfully discussed with – and reasonably be assured for – a 10-year-old girl. https://t.co/F1fHSDPnHk
— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) November 23, 2025
The first of a long string of fake accounts that deceive people into thinking they’re giving money to Gaza. If you want to donate, do it through a reputable organization, and by that I do NOT mean the UN:
“I am Maryam, a 7 year old from Gaza. Please save me and my family🙏🤍🇵🇸”
Account based in: Qatar
Connected via: United Kingdom App Store pic.twitter.com/LrGZsqqXe7
— Max 📟 (@MaxNordau) November 22, 2025
From Luana. An alternative explanation is that the fake spiders are decoys to get predators to take the fake ones instead of the real one. Perhaps Steve can clarify:
Two species of spiders have been spotted weaving giant silk decoys of themselves – sometimes up to ten times their own size – to scare off predators. They even shake the decoys to make them move, effectively creating spider scarecrows at the center of their webs.
[Link below.] pic.twitter.com/BYmYRYmn7B
— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) November 22, 2025
A FB video from Malcolm:
One from my feed; gorgeous marine mammals:
This is easily one of the most incredible videos I’ve ever seen on the internet.. pic.twitter.com/8jWBw2iqVF
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) November 23, 2025
One I retweeted from The Auschwitz Memorial, memorializing the first trial )1947) of Germans who killed in Auschwitz. An excerpt:
The indictment primarily included allegations of the defendants’ participation in the gassing of Jews, as well as numerous executions and maltreatments of prisoners and other atrocities committed in the camp. The best-known defendants were Arthur Liebehenschel, the second commandant of Auschwitz; Maximilian Grabner, the head of the camp’s Political Department; Hans Aumeier, one of the camp managers and deputy commandant; Maria Mandl, chief women supervisor of the Auschwitz women camp; and SS-doctor Johann Kremer. 35 others, 32 men and three women, who had served as administration staff, guards or doctors in the camp, were also tried.
The Supreme National Tribunal issued 23 death sentences and 16 imprisonments, ranging from life sentences to 3 years. One person was acquitted. All executions were carried out in a Kraków prison in January 1948.
24 November 1947 | The First Auschwitz Trial began in Kraków, when Polish authorities (the Supreme National Tribunal) tried 40 former staff of the German Nazi camp Auschwitz. The trial ended on 22 December 1947.
Learn more about SS garrison members as well as the female… pic.twitter.com/DZHsDPLbP9
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) November 24, 2025
. . . and two from Dr. Cobb. First, live and learn: read the article:
Jumping spiders can recognise one another. This ability to learn, remember and represent images is quite surprising for such a tiny-brained animal!buff.ly/dCkwPr0
I like this one:
"It really is a travesty that England, named after the Angles, speaks English and speakers are called Anglophone, when it could have been Sexland, named after the Saxons, speaking Sexish and speakers are called Saxophone"
— Oregon 🕎🎲 (@oregonthedm.bsky.social) 2025-11-22T20:38:17.833Z
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead. -Arundhati Roy, writer and activist (b. 24 Nov 1961)
My first guess was that they are anchovies. I like anchovies and sardines!
I read a piece late last week on the Ukrainian deal. The author pointed out two things that are substantial changes from what Russia had previously wanted. First, it provided for Ukrainian entry into the EU, a major issue for Russian. Second, it allows for an army of 700,000. Previously, Russia had wanted Ukraine’s army limited to 60,000, and Ukraine had countered with 250,000, so 700,000 is quite a jump.
I wonder if that marine mammal video is AI-generated. How could the camera have been placed so exactly in relation to the path of the right flipper? Also, it seemed to slow down as it passed the camera. And how could the animals’ paths be predicted so precisely in the first place? The first dolphin went directly under the camera.
Taking a page from Avi Loeb, the odds that a random dolphin’s course would go directly under the camera from such a long distance away are vanishingly small. This suggests a technological signature.
Pretty much my thoughts.
Hadn’t thought of that with this video. But the diver would have positioned themselves directly in front of the group, and the whale slightly turned. They do turn to avoid collision. The slowing when passing could be done by slightly changing the frame rate in post processing.
I don’t see obvious signs of super perfection, which is a sign of AI. But yes, it could still be AI. And why would dolphins and a whale swim together anyway?
So I am not sure….
The trajectories are so perfectly targeting the camera.
Trying to parse backgrounds or number of fingers in AI is non helpful. Like you say, Lou, we can only tell by asking “How did this image come to be recorded? What are the base rates here?” like you do.
Which doesn’t work for just a person talking into a camera of course, but useful here.
best
D.A.
NYC
The water surface doesn’t look right to me. It looks as if the camera is simultaneously above the water and below it. I don’t mean the surface of the water is cutting across a single lens but it seems as if a rendering of the surface from well above it, with breaking wake/waves seen from above, is being applied over top of the sub-surface action. As for the critters themselves…?
I agree that ICE should not be doing anything illegal in its operations. It is, however, a trope pushed by the Left that ICE should only be going after illegal aliens who otherwise have criminal records. ICE’s mandate, and the President’s, is to go after all illegal aliens. This is just a way to pretend that they are being excessive.
At the same time, though, why is the Left so concerned to protect illegals and prevent ICE from doing it’s job?
Perhaps because what ICE is doing isn’t “its job”, where is it written that its job is to be cruel and heartless? Why is this considered to be ok behaviour by some Americans?
“It is, however, a trope pushed by the Left that ICE should only be going after illegal aliens who otherwise have criminal records”
Not only, but surely, since ICE’s resources, like everyone else’s, are limited, they ought to prioritize their goals; they can’t go after everybody all at once. Why not prioritize the gangbangers and drug-runners and other serious criminals? The guys lining up for a day job unloading merchandise at Home Depot aren’t a threat to anyone.
Low-hanging fruit, LM. If the goal is to reduce the number of illegal aliens in the country, regardless of “threat”, it is more efficient to scoop them up 100 at a time at high-yield locations and deport them in a batch, as the law requires. No papers and no asylum claim?, out you go. Targeting aliens with criminal histories is very difficult because law-enforcement in sanctuary cities and states will have hidden this information from ICE and the alien will not be carrying his arrest record on his person to make it easy for the immigration enforcement officer or the immigration judge to say, “Aha! Got a live one!” Even going after aliens whom ICE knows by name to have criminal histories means ICE has to somehow find them. A slow drip of production rather than a flood.
If you say that the focus for immigration enforcement should be on troublemakers among the illegal alien crowd, then you are really calling for open borders. Anyone can sneak in or over-stay and be secure against deportation unless ICE learns about any criminal activity and tracks him down deliberately, in a culture that hides this history from the people assigned the task of doing it.
OK, it’s unkind to deport people who’ve been in the U.S. under the radar for many years and have had citizen children, and there are economic and cultural consequences pro and con. But a useful fact for foreigners planning their lives is that no matter how long you manage to hide here, if we catch you you’re going home. No amnesty.
The WaPo article pretty much ignores the underlying issue, which is that the “educational decline” is driven by the woke demand for group-based “equity”, or equal outcomes.
If you award As in maths to Asian-American students then you must award the same number of As to black-American students. And the only way to do that is to award As to everyone whatever.
If a certain fraction of Asian-American students pass a maths exam then you must ensure that the same fraction of black-American students pass that exam. And the only way one can comply is by not having the exam.
If a fast-track gifted program contains a certain number of Asian-American students then you must ensure that the same number of black-American students qualify. And the only way of complying is to scrap the gifted track.
And if one erects “equal outcomes” goalposts and demands that schools must aim for them, then the school aims for them. Hard to blame the school.
In reality, there is no good reason to suppose that talent is equally distributed among all groups (there is no benevolent god ensuring that, however desirable it might be), any more than it is equally distributed within groups — and at some point America will have to grow up enough to accept that equal educational opportunities (which America has pretty much had for 40 years now) will not automatically produce equal educational outcomes.
100% Coel, again.
DEI is the death of merit – a bad situation. The worst part is it damages the very people it is suppose to help the most.
D.A.
NYC
Third/fourth/fifth paragraphs after “And back to her big conclusions:” seem to be from a different story.
I write this in all sincerity, the public education sector is a national security risk. If you are a non-Asian minority, there is a good chance the public education system will enslave and trap you in the government system of handouts or prison. Just look at the data on both fronts.
My observation has been that the U.S. K-12 public ed system is uneven, with some excellent curriculum and teaching at some schools and even throughout some school systems, some pretty terrible examples in others, and mediocre, dated content in most. The mediocrity, in my experience, is due to a lack of political will, year after year, to oppose the status quo. In Virginia, and I think most other states, STEM curriculum development is done mostly by the teachers and educationalists from university schools of ed, receiving little input from subject matter expert professors, government research labs, or industry. There are, historically, a few excellent examples of inclusion of contemporary content, such as the BSCS and PSSC programs of the 1960’s and Leon Lederman’s Physics First or ARISE recommendation from the late 90’s/2000, and to some extent the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) of circa 2013. And there are some legitimate K-12 engineering programs available. But the large-scale transformation and will to carry out continuing education for teachers, such as assuring enough chemistry and physics-qualified teachers to implement a physics first curriculum, does not seem to be there on policy-making boards.
So that is STEM, but just as big an issue I believe, is a lack of will to ensure that all kids, regardless of home or socio-economic background, can read at grade level by grade 2.
JB, do you think continuing ed can do much here? Please can you say how? I don’t understand.
I don’t see how continuing education can do much against an entrenched ideology. Perhaps it would help if we closed the gates a bit, maybe requiring that incoming primary teachers have a major in English Literature or Physics or Chem or Biology or Maths (or other such foundational subjects). That might at least restore some balance, and it would make teaching jobs more respectable in the public’s eye. But how can we address the problem of existing ‘teachers’ who are themselves close to illiterate and innumerate and whose raison d’être is political or social radical activism? (Maybe the situation is worse here in NZ than in the USA?)
Can most college students planning careers as school teachers even cope with those majors, though? Those that can, don’t they have better options, especially if they find the activist group-think oppressive and soul-destroying? What a thing to do to a 19-year-old (+/-) sophomore!
As for the ones already in, their unions protect them. End of story. The ratchet won’t move backwards. Muscular peristalsis in the snake, and the way its teeth point, means the frog moves only one way.
I don’t entirely blame the teachers. The have just colonized a niche. I don’t think causality moves through them. Rather, a dysfunctional client culture and an opportunistic political culture enable each other to produce discouraging outcomes. The teachers are just box-tickers. The ones who buck the system are heroes, and heroes are by their nature exceptional.
Leslie, I taught high school physics and mathin the early 70’s, served on a local school board in the 90’s, led astatewide review of high school physics, chemistry, and engineering curriculum in 2007-08, and taught teacher workshops in modeling and simulation and engineering design to K12 teachers for NASA in the 2010-16 time period (in retirement). So my experience is a bit dated, but it was that we always had a core of very curious, excited, and bright teachers who did want to learn and grabbed every opportunity offered…even on saturdays! The general culture of the school district often showed through in that I could identify which school district a teacher came from just by his or her enthusiasm and attitude.
So I think that if continuous learning in your discipline becomes a requirement and is rewarded, the best and brightest will perform and stay, and the dullards will steadily leave. Of course we are a right to work state.
By continuing ed, I mean, having all middle and high school science teachers put on 12-month contracts which support additional coursework or research in a STEM field during summers. That means real STEM from the regular science discipline dept, not stem-ed from a school of ed. I do not expect many high school science teachers to be able to take graduate coursework, but I do believe them fully capable of undergrad courses both in their original major or in other science, or math, or engineering disciplines. This would, over several years, allow for our biology majors to be competent chemistry teachers and vice versa. All science teachers will have a competence in engineering design as ngss suggests in its requirements. All teachers K-12, would learn grade level appropriate modeling and simulation and computer methods.
My experience is that the vast majority of current teachers I know and have worked with are neither illiterate nor innumerate, though there is always more they can know, and that is where formal continuing education from DISCIPLINE subject matter experts comes in. Prorating a 9-10 month teaching contract to 12months is more attractive than having teachers working at swimming pools and amusement parks for summer supplemental income.
I do not see social radicalization activism as a national problem here in the states in spite of some of the themes I see at national math conferences. There are numerous specialty and governor’s public schools where faculty and curriculum provide working examples that others can simply “cut and paste”…no invention required…simply political will.
Thank you for explaining. I appreciate it. And your suggestions make excellent sense to me. The people standing up against the orthodoxy in NZ education are saying much the same as you, and the government seems to be taking things on board. But I had not heard any discussion of continuing education until your comments.
S, i do not see a “reply” prompt so hope this works: it turns out teachers are required to have continuing education for points toward recertification of their teaching license every five or ten years. But that requirement is almost always satisfied by professional education (pedagogy) course or workshops. So this is a sea change to require or at least encourage subject area coursework. These things are done. For example at the Thomas Jefferson High School of Science and Math,
a public governor’s school in Northern VA, many teachers are certified as adjuncts at nearby Gorge Mason University to teach sophomore level college courses at the high school. As I said, it is simply a matter of political will.
In what way is this the fault of the public education sector? What exactly is it doing wrong?
Did D. B. Cooper really ask for and get “random” money or was it “ransom” money? Because it appears twice, I assume that ai was helping you out, but of course in doubting myself more every day, I may be wrong.
I’m fixing it; a clear typo.
That whole hijacking is a wild story – dude just strolled onto a DC-9 with a handgun!
It was a simpler, more innocent time (before I was born).
That, and almost weekly air piracy in those days got us to TSA-land.
D.A.
NYC
True, the mutant must get laid, but that doesn’t excuse his incorrect placement of “only”.
When I think about it, it’s not really true anyway. Evolution also works because a lot of mutants can’t get laid. Many don’t even survive infancy. The test of the fitness of a mutant lies in whether he can get laid at higher rates than the wild-type, given the existing selection pressures. Maybe I should reword that to say the fitness of a mutation lies in whether those individuals who have it survive and get laid (fertilely) at higher rates than those who have only the wild-type alleles.
The Israeli leadership learned a terrible lesson by not taking decisive action until Iran and its proxies initiated actual kinetic attacks on October 7. Hamas had built up a terror-state over many years, with at least partial knowledge by Israel. Hezbollah had become the de-facto military hegemon in Lebanon. And Iran had built a nuclear weapons infrastructure that was just about ready to become operational. But Israel allowed it all to happen, in part because it needed the support of a conflict-averse U.S., because it craved acceptance by the international community, and because it had become “startup nation,” a strong and growing economic power that required government to focus on domestic matters.
The lesson that Israel learned is that Israel-hating regimes will keep pressing forward with their plans to eradicate the Jewish state whether Israel pays attention or not. No more. When Hamas terrorists cross the yellow line, Israel will go after them. If Lebanon will not disarm Hezbollah, Israel will go after Hezbolla’s leadership. And, if Iran shows signs of reanimating its nuclear weapon or ballistic missile programs, Israel will go after them. It’s this change of perspective—this understanding that those who call for the destruction of Israel actually mean it—that we’re seeing play out in Israel’s attack on the Hezbollah leadership. Rather than waiting for the enemy to attack, Israel is taking preemptive action. It’s a new normal.
I note some common threads in how today’s stories are often told:
It’s not fair that Russia should win; next they will invade us all.
Trump is abducting undocumented mothers from daycare centers (I saw it posted on X!). Then he throws them in confinement where they must pee without privacy; if it could happen to them, then it could happen to any of us.
It isn’t fair for children to get poor grades and low test scores if they work hard. Effort should count. Most of them aren’t like those of us who hold advanced degrees; their environment didn’t prepare them for the education that we were given. They simply need credentials so they can have good lives. We owe it to them. Just think, it could have been any of us in their shoes.
We can try to beat Russia: pour 60,000 American lives into the fight mandated by adherents of the contemporary domino theory. Start with their children and grandchildren.
Perhaps the Atlantic or another outlet can advance the cause of illegal immigration by writing a story about male roofers forced to pee in front of other men. The horror! I’m not justifying all of Trump’s approach; some seem excessive. But Dr. B is correct: the framing about violent criminals is left-wing spin to make Trump look bad in enforcing the law when he deports the nonviolent. It appears that the mantra “no one is above the law” and the question of which laws should be enforced are rather selective principles for many. We won’t solve the immigration problems here, but I will offer that if de facto amnesty resides on the desirable side of a closed border, then the border will leak—a lot. Future Democratic Administrations will just reopen the border, daring Republicans to arrest the next crying mothers. It is an intentional setup, not an unfortunate byproduct of bad policy.
Education reform. I leave that to others more fortunate than I. As a working-class boy from a struggling community, I lacked the caring adults who would give free As and eliminate the SAT. It pains me to think who I might otherwise have become had they been there for me.
It is important to know the threat Russia poses:
1) signs on its European borders saying “The border of Russia does not end anywhere”
2) drones in Poland and other European countries
3) cutting undersea cables in the Baltic area by dragging anchor chains
There are measures that can be taken that don’t involve NATO military action:
a) sanctions. Trump has not kept up here.
aid to Ukraine. Trump is for some unknown reason, more sympathetic to Russia
b) cut off all trade
the EU has dragged on these issues, too. They desperately wanted to think of Russia as a normal country after the Cold War. Eg Germany got involved in the Nordstream Pipeline.
There are a couple of openly pro-Russia European countries: Hungary & Slovakia. They continue to buy Russian oil.
Yes in entirety FK.
Russia is a malignant force in the world. Brilliant historian Stephen Kotkin talks (and you should listen…) about Russia’s aspirations being higher than its abilities, and Sarah Payne (U.S. Naval college, she’s my favorite broad on earth!)… talks about how Russia has always been…. cruel. To everybody.
I want to bring back the idea – popular in my 80s youth – of “the Evil Empire.”
D.A.
NYC
I’ll check them out! Thx.
David,
I, too, appreciate Kotkin’s perspective. His is a historically-grounded moderation one would wish for from others, like Mearsheimer and Snyder. But when will he ever finish that Stalin biography?!
On immigration. Obama certainly wasn’t a dick, but didn’t he do most of his “deporting” at the border when it is a much easier process than cleaning up the mess a predecessor left by waving the masses through—and thus encouraging even more to come?
To me Doug, it is not about what is fair for the Ukrainians it is what is right.
They have a right to a souveign state, self determination and after all said and done they did not invade russia for that right.
We talk a lot about rights on WEIT and the document stating these rights, in the US it is that important although at present polically we outsiders wonder about that.
What is fair to me may not be for you but your rights are the same as mine. The right to be free of violence, security, and the pusuit of what makes you florish and have a meaningful life. Ditto for everyone else.
You need, then, need to petition your government to send combat troops and fighter-bombers to Ukraine to beat the Russians back, because Ukraine is not going to be able to do it by itself. A strategic air offensive against Russian weapons production and primary industry, oil, rail transport, and electricity generation would help, too. And you will have to defend yourselves against Russian efforts to thwart that offensive, including their attacking your home territory and sinking ships that bring your trade to you.
Ukraine, as a state, has a right to defend itself. But it has no right to prevail, because in its current circumstances to collect on that “right” it has to compel its allies to help it repel Russia. This will happen only if your country decides its interests are existentially and inextricably tied to Ukraine’s. But even the NATO Treaty doesn’t bind signatories to one another that way.
In my heart, I think President Trump knows that plucky Ukraine is doomed, ever since the Summer Offensive of 2022 failed, and so is Europe, neither worth risking nuclear miscalculation over. He’s trying to plan for a world where Russia has subjugated or Finlandized Europe but doesn’t ideologically threaten America the way the old Soviet Union did. That world looks very different from 1960.
At risk of overcommenting . . .
It is a legitimate perspective, Laingholm, and I respect the heartfelt response. But victory often eludes those who are right and favors those who are stronger or more committed. I have said many times here that I don’t blame the Ukrainians for fighting—at least the ones who still want to—but I believe Obama was correct: Ukraine means far more to Putin than it ever will to Americans.
Our approach to date has amounted to getting more Ukrainians killed without breaking the stalemate. Might limited strikes within Russia turn the tide? Perhaps. Enough uncertainty remains that military professionals will differ on whether this war is winnable for Ukraine—with or without direct US military engagement. But that uncertainty is always the rub: the siren calls of “if only more sanctions,” “if only more money and weapons,” “if only the plan and sanctions had been implemented correctly,”—if only we had more men who could die.
How many dead are enough? How much time must pass before people accept that their plans have failed? Who knows? But even a righteous cause can be lost or exact a price too heavy to pay.
Thanks, Doug, Leslie,
As you can tell, I am passionate about a murderous thug (Putin) deciding how the Ukrainians should live a life.
I believe the Ukrainians do have a strategic plan with or without the US as it hasn’t exactly been forthcoming, they have shown to be resolute, innovative in conducting modern warfare most by necessity. To continue over overconfidence? folly? as you say Doug, what price is too high as civilians are paying by deliberate Russian criminal acts… who knows but good luck to them.
Post deleted. I forgot to do a Word Count and it turns out to be too long.
Dang.
Trying again:
Jerry the vast majority of people you allowed in were not fleeing a credible threat of being endangered, and don’t even claim to have been. A Canadian who goes legally to LA to work in the film industry, or to New York to work with David A. on Wall Street — there are thousands of them — is not fleeing persecution in Canada. Nor is a tech worker from India on a work visa. They come to America to seek better economic opportunities than they had at home, and sometimes to get rich. Generally these are the people you want, either as temporary workers or permanent residents with a path to citizenship. Off topic, because you were talking about people whose papers are in order, even most of your illegals are of that ilk. Some might be coming only for the welfare state. But since ours is more generous, those illegals will try to come to Canada instead, by making asylum claims of persecution.
In FY 2023, the last figures I could find from Homeland Security, the U.S. accepted only 54,000 asylum claims, a quarter of them from Afghanistan. (Asylees are different from refugees.) This is a small fraction of the claims made, often at the time of apprehension in-country, even before a large surge of asylum claims in 2024 as we know.
You don’t really want to be a magnet for people fleeing persecution, now that the Soviet Union is no longer a thing, because sometimes people are being persecuted for good reasons in cultures you don’t understand, and their goal is to persecute others given half a chance. (Would you accept the claim of a Muslim man of 21 who escaped from Gaza that you should harbour him because he was being persecuted by Israel? Many countries do, and they’ll regret it. Canada admitted a lot of Sikhs claiming persecution by India and now the diaspora is causing diplomatic problems for us with India because they are fomenting support for an independent Khalistan back in India. A lot of the thuggery in heavily Indian cities like Surrey and Brampton is down to competing visions of persecution, and revenge for same.)
Whatever, no country’s immigration system is organized around saving the world’s persecuted. It’s entirely self-interested: Is it worth it to us to make a bet on this foreigner who wants to come here, all things considered?
I approve Leslie’s nuanced argument here. The asylum system was built for another age – the post war – with a trickle of the few Soviet refuseniks who could brave barbed wire to escape the Evil Empire. Not …. every Nigerian wanting a better job or… waaay worse.. every jihadi from the “Dar al Islam” (Islamosphere).
Immigration is excellent – I am one (twice, once to Japan and then later here), many of my friends, former employees and neighbors are immigrants…. but the system requires responsive manipulation to serve everybody. And “dosages” and culture.. matter.
Plus… Obama deported as many people or more, just wasn’t a dick about it. 🙂
D.A.
NYC
David,
I do love your turn of phrase! “…just wasn’t a dick about it”.